Monthly Archives: February 2005

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You read that right. Thanks to the popularity of the Pump it Up arcade game in latin america, there is now a mexican-made official trading card game. Songs from the game take the place of traditional monsters, complete with attack and defense, with items and effects cards being used as well. It’s edited and distributed by MangaK (not to be confused with the anime fanzine of the same name), out of a few stores in mexico city.

In a decision that’s likely to be somewhat horrible for Atlus financially, but fantastic for readers of this particular website, the company will be bringing the brilliant GBA/WSC RPG Riviera: The Promised Land to the US in summer of 2005. Absolutely buy this game when it comes out. In related news, Atlus is also bringing us Samurai Western and Puyo Pop Fever on PS2 and DS respectively.

Lawrence has put up a gallery of images from this year’s AOU show. The emphasis is on girls, but there are also several game shots in there, largely of Ibara. Amusing anecdote of the show:

“Saw a very attractive Namco rep bend over to talk to a boy, who looked about ten years old. He just reached up and grabbed her boob, surprising her to the point where her jaw dropped and the boy sprinted off. For the next half hour the poor girl, completely flustered, kept her arms crossed.”

Genshiken was one of the best Anime surprises of last winter in Japan, and to promote the release of the new DVD pack next friday (including episodes 5 to 8), Media Factory announced that lucky (and wealthy) buyers of the whole Genshiken DVD collection (14500 yen per box) would be gratified with Unbalance Fighters Beta, which is apparently a 2D fighting game based on the characters of Kujibiki Unbalance. For those not in the know, please stay focused, it’s a bit twisted : Genshiken is originally a manga about a club of otakus who happen to be fans of a fictional manga called Kujibiki Unbalance. In the Genshiken anime, they are instead fans of the Kujibiki Unbalance anime. But as they worked on the anime adaptation of Genshiken, Media Factory also produced the actual Kujibiki Unbalance anime, which can be found in the form of a series of OAV through the purchase of Genshiken DVD boxes (one Kujibiki Unbalance episode per Genshiken box). So we have an anime made for a fictional story in which characters are fans of that anime and therefore buy a lot of related goods and doujins. The forthcoming Unbalance Fighters is certainly the kind of doujin game the characters of Genshiken would be playing, which leads us to conclude that fans who bought all the DVD boxes will get an official game pretending to be a doujin game of a previously fake manga turned into a real anime to please the real fans of the fictional fans of the aforementioned fake manga and real anime. Yes.

Nihon Falcom just created a page for the next game in the Ys series, called The Oath in Felghana. Nothing except the title and the logo of the game has been released, so questions like when the game will be released, on which platform it will debut (probably Windows?), and why it’s not called Ys 7 will have to wait.

The slick Click-Stick has gathered an impressive amount of media and links focused on the shoot’em ups featured at the AOU2005 arcade show, including Ibara, Rajiguri, Mushihime Sama, Senko no Ronde, Homura and Shikigami no Shiro III – grab ‘em via his site. If those links are broken by the time you read this news, the magnificent Jiji is hosting a batch of useful mirrors.

Incidentally, the IC Forums are celebrating Konami Week right now. It’s worth lurking there, especially if you always wanted to know more about how Lorenzo Lamas got credited in Snake Eater, Kojima’s favorite scene in The Great Escape, or why Powerful Pro Yakkyuu is Japan’s number one sports series.

This weekend’s AOU Amusement Expo in Tokyo has revealed two unexpected comebacks to the arcade scene. Firstly, there’s Mario himself, both in his ‘kart’ form thanks to Namco, and as several ‘medal games’ from Capcom. But secondly, the classic 2D side-scroller, widely ignored by the arcade audience and media at present. Taito wants to bring the jumping, platforms, cute characters and multi-purpose umbrellas back in full hi-res sprite glory with ‘Spica Adventure’, a game for the Windows-based Type X system, ported from Japanese mobile phones. Game Watch has the only screenshot available for now – look for more info.

This isn’t the first time we’ve mentioned Eien no Aselia – developed by Xuse, this adventure/simulation game with RPG-style combat appeared for Windows in Japan in 2003, and Nippon 1 thought it would be a good idea to publish a port for the PS2. The forthcoming PS2 version has an official website full of nice content, including in-game screenshots and the usual character artwork. Best of all, it has now a Japanese release date for the game: April 28th, 2005.